Ex-Officer Who Shot Walter Scott Pleads Guilty in Charleston

CHARLESTON, S.C. — More than two years after a North Charleston, S.C., police officer fired eight rounds toward the back of a fleeing and unarmed black motorist, the lawman whose burst of gunfire was recorded on video stood in a federal courtroom Tuesday to plead guilty to charges that he violated the slain man’s civil rights.

The plea by the officer, Michael T. Slager, assured a rare conviction of a law enforcement official for an on-duty killing, and it left him facing the possibility of life in prison for the April 2015 shooting of Walter L. Scott. Mr. Slager pleaded guilty to a single charge of willfully using excessive force to deprive Mr. Scott of his civil rights.

Mr. Slager said little during a brief hearing in United States District Court here, but he acknowledged the factual basis for the plea agreement, which said he had “used deadly force even though it was objectively unreasonable under the circumstances.”

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In video provided to The New York Times, a police officer in North Charleston, S.C., is seen shooting an apparently unarmed man after a scuffle following a traffic stop.Published OnApril 7, 2015

Minutes later, as Mr. Slager was led from the courtroom in handcuffs, he passed crying members of Mr. Scott’s family. Across the courtroom’s center aisle, members of Mr. Slager’s family stood silently and tearfully.

The plea deal effectively resolves all of the pending charges against Mr. Slager, 35, who had also been indicted on a charge of murder in state court. While the arrangement offers certain benefits to Mr. Slager, such as a possible reduction under federal sentencing guidelines for acceptance of responsibility, the agreement is mostly a victory for people who have spent years raising alarms about police conduct in the nation.

Under the plea agreement, prosecutors will ask the court to apply sentencing guidelines that in effect would be for a second-degree murder charge. Notably, the deal expressly allows prosecutors to urge Judge David C. Norton, who did not immediately set a sentencing hearing, to order Mr. Slager to spend the rest of his life in prison.

“The Department of Justice will hold accountable any law enforcement officer who violates the civil rights of our citizens by using excessive force,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “Such failures of duty not only harm the individual victims of these crimes; they harm our country, by eroding trust in law enforcement and undermining the good work of the vast majority of honorable and honest police officers.”

The agreement was greeted here with measured surprise. Although one of South Carolina’s top lawyers, Andrew J. Savage III, was in charge of Mr. Slager’s defense, a jury signaled in December that it nearly returned a conviction for either murder or manslaughter during a state trial.

Those proceedings ended in a mistrial, but some people here had wondered whether they would ultimately prod Mr. Slager into an agreement with prosecutors.

It was not publicly clear until Tuesday morning that it would. But Mr. Slager abruptly dropped the defense that he had offered since Mr. Scott’s death in April 2015: that he had feared for his life after a traffic stop that went awry and a struggle over a Taser device.

The early moments of Mr. Slager’s fatal encounter with Mr. Scott were not in dispute. Mr. Slager, a patrolman in North Charleston, stopped Mr. Scott for a broken taillight. After a brief, cordial interaction, Mr. Scott fled on foot. (His family has suggested that Mr. Scott ran because he feared being jailed over outstanding child support payments.)

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Walter ScottCreditRandall Hill/Reuters

Mr. Slager gave chase, and, he later testified, struggled with Mr. Scott in a vacant lot over his Taser. But Mr. Scott broke free and continued to run. Mr. Slager then opened fire, striking Mr. Scott in the back and sending him crumpling to the ground.

Part of the episode — some of the most controversial seconds — unfolded as a local barber recorded it on his cellphone while he walked to work. The stark images ricocheted around the internet, made newspaper front pages and led television broadcasts.

Mr. Slager was charged with murder and swiftly fired, and the City of North Charleston reached a $6.5 million settlement with Mr. Scott’s family. Meanwhile, Mr. Slager’s defense team argued that he was a good officer swept up in an era of discontent and protest over police tactics, especially in the wake of a white officer’s killing of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014.

That defiance vanished on Tuesday.

“Our responsibility today is to be quiet,” Mr. Savage said after Mr. Slager entered his plea. Earlier Tuesday, his office had issued a statement that said, “We hope that Michael’s acceptance of responsibility will help the Scott family as they continue to grieve their loss.”

John O’Leary, a defense lawyer in Columbia, the South Carolina capital, who is a former director of the state’s Criminal Justice Academy, said it made sense that Mr. Slager would want to avoid the troubled state prison system and bring the cases that surrounded him to a conclusion.

“I think he’s lucky to get it,” Mr. O’Leary said of the deal.

Scarlett A. Wilson, the local prosecutor, suggested that her decision to accept a plea arrangement was something of a strategic choice. But she and Mr. Scott’s survivors emphasized that they were in agreement about the outcome that many people here said would not have been possible without the bystander’s cellphone video, which showed Mr. Slager standing and firing.

“It’s not a joyous day,” Ms. Wilson said. “It’s sad to see such an event like this happen, and to watch it before your very eyes and to know how many good men and women in law enforcement are also paying for what Michael Slager did. It’s not fair.”

By late afternoon, Mr. Slager had been processed at the Charleston County jail, where he will await sentencing and an eventual transfer to a federal prison.

Standing outside the courthouse, Mr. Scott’s mother, Judy Scott, said she forgave Mr. Slager, and although one of her sons called for Mr. Slager to be sentenced to a life term, Ms. Scott was less specific about what penalty she wanted her son’s killer to face.

“Michael Slager admitted what he did,” Ms. Scott said. “That was enough years for me because no matter how many years Michael Slager gets, it would not bring back my son.”

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A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Ex-Officer Who Fatally Shot Unarmed Black Motorist Pleads Guilty in Charleston. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe